


30 Days of the Dovahkiin

by aureliu_s



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Dovahkiin - Freeform, Dragons, F/M, Past Relationship(s), Tags will be updated, edgy dovahkiin, probably some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-06-19 14:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15511626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aureliu_s/pseuds/aureliu_s
Summary: 30 days of short, prompt-inspired chapters surrounding my Dovahkiin and her travels.





	1. Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1: Hero
> 
> I'm thinking about Dovahkiin/Aldis (it's outlandish, but it's grown on me), but I'm not sure yet. Thoughts?

Aldis found it increasingly hard to believe that the woman, the _girl_ he had once knew stood before him now with dragon blood in her veins, the faint glow from the beast’s soul subsiding like a distant halo. The city guard remained petrified to their positions before sending up a few cheers. To honor her. To honor the _Dragonborn_ . He was sure she didn’t recognize him, not after all these years. Not after their last talk. Argument _._ Aldis had tried not to call it that, but in the back of his head he knew that was exactly what it was. Her armor, steel and hardy, was spattered with blood, as were her hands--almost coated in it. Solitude guards waved their shields in half-triumph, half-gratitude to the woman standing before them. The smile was small but real, he noted. Small but intensely genuine. The large skeleton on the hill behind them rattled as each bone hit the ground. Aldis made a mental note to send a few men out to collect those; the Legion and the Thalmor would be interested. Maybe he’d get a pay raise, but that wasn’t how the Thalmor worked.

Her eyes settled on him, and with interest he regarded their color. They had always been pale, icy blue, but now they seemed almost white, translucent. Perhaps it was the blood red warpaint that surrounded her eyes, shooting down her cheeks and jaw and coming to stiff points just above her collarbone. It hadn’t been there before, but he deemed it worthy of covering her face. It took him a second to realize she had nodded towards him but not in acknowledgement of who he was; merely in acknowledgement of his position as captain. Captain Aldis.  
“You’ve done Solitude a great favor, Dragonborn.” He nodded, extending his hand to shake. She took it with a firm grip, the light glancing off her Nordic bracers into his face. Aldis blinked to dismiss it and she stepped back. He held her gaze for as long as he could before moving aside and gesturing to the Solitude gates. “Open the gates for the Dragonborn, Violena.” The female guard standing beside the massive metal doors to the city nodded. “For Solitude’s hero.”

 _Hero._  She’d come a long way.


	2. Ash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 2: Ash

The watchtower was enveloped in smoke that blackened the sky, reaching far into the afternoon sun. Irileth stood fast beside her, their armor clanking in unison with the Whiterun troops beside them.   
“By Ysmir, it’s circling back!” Went up a defeated cry, and a soldier in the same yellow cuirass as the ones behind her stumbled past, half his face seared.

“Stand fast, men!” Irileth called, “this dragon hasn’t felt the full might of Whiterun yet.”

Tharya went over the familiar stances and enchantments in her head, finally settling on one. A lavender orb of magic appeared in her closed fist, and from her fingers sprang a shimmering translucent bow, a quiver of ghostly arrows on her shoulder. The Whiterun soldiers set up in a cluster, swords ready, shields the only thing between them and the fire breathing legend in the skies. She had one hundred arrows exactly until the Bound spell vanished and she would have to recast it. Notching one against her finger brought the familiar sensation of magic; cool, almost mist-like.

A roar and a burst of intense heat beat down on their left, and with one large swoop the dragon was circling closer to the watchtower. _If only there was a way to bring the beasts down to us_. She moved up the broken wall, half of it shattered like glass on the ground, and took a leap over the second break into the main tower. Whiterun was smart, situating a watchtower here, where on a clear day you could see miles in any direction. The spiraling stone stairs on the right were intact, and she took them by three up to the top of the tower. There was a few smoking corpses that set off a repugnant smell, almost as strong as the scent of fire.   
“Talos bless your souls,” she murmured, stepping carefully over each one. One hundred arrows, and one dragon.

Tharya began loosing them one by one, in a steady stream. The men on the ground were useless if the dragon stayed in the air, so each shimmering purple streak shot itself into one wing or another. If it hurt enough, the beast would have to land, and they’d have a better chance.

The winged terror gave a screeching roar, something between squeaky wagon wheels and screaming infants. The ground below them seemed to sink and shake, and in the settling cloud of dust a monstrous head reared out. Irileth shouted something and the small Whiterun company attacked, rag-tag and free-for-all. A belch of fire sent a handful of them down. With a clap, the Bound bow disappeared and Tharya sprang up from her cover, breezing back down the stairs. This time the spell changed, and both of her hands curved around the large hilt of a ghastly battleaxe. She fought beside the Whiterun men and Irileth, the smoke stinging her eyes, ash being kicked like sand beneath her boots.

 

And when the smoke finally cleared, and the ash cloud finally settled, the dragon’s skin began to peel off, and a strange, white aura enveloped her.


	3. Sin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3: sin
> 
> Already behind!! Ugh :(

“You can’t just stand around. People are starting to recognize your face,” Aldis snapped, slamming the door to the castle dour behind her. Tharya looked unphased by his precaution. “Especially the soldiers.”

“Why would they recognize me?”

“People know the Dragonborn. Now people know the Dragonborn has sided with the Stormcloaks.”

“The people are very observant.”

Aldis bit back a frustrated sigh, rubbing a hand over his face before crossing his arms.

“Why are you here?” Her pale, icy eyes settled on him after this string of words. He knew that look; he knew it, and he hated it. “No.”  
“You’d be an idiot to join the losing team, Aldis.”   
“Then I’m an idiot.”

Tharya snorted, her eyes glistening for a moment.  
“At least you admit it.” He remained silent and staunch. Something in the back of his head tugged at his brain; he refused to admit there was some inkling of truth to her words. “Join. The war ends, we overthrow High King Racist Stormcloak, and void off the elves. I know you like the Thalmor just about as much as I do.” Still he said nothing; it sounded promising, though. Gods damn her for planting these patriotic seeds of revolution in his stomach. He wanted to suspect that she had been cultivating him for years now, ever since their childhood, but Tharya had always spoken her mind. Aldis could hardly blame an eleven year old for speaking her mind all those years ago, but he _could_ blame himself for listening.   
“I know you, Aldis.” She moved back towards him, reached for his neck. He stepped away, extensive guard training kicking in; a hit, a chokehold. Evil intention of some kind...but none came. The only thing he felt was a hand, fingers reaching beneath his tunic to yank out an amulet attached on a long chain. “Better than you think.” In her fingers was a burnished gold amulet, the upwards curves of a miniature double-sided waraxe like an evil grimace, intricate designs meeting the light of the castle dour. “Only a Nord with a deathwish would wear an amulet of Talos as a captain in the Imperial Army.”


	4. Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4: teeth
> 
> Kudos to whoever finds the Dragon Age reference B)

“Do my teeth look sharper?” Without tearing his eyes away from the training guards, Aldis grunted in reply. That usually fended her questions off, but instead she repeated it. The captain sighed before glancing to her mouth.

“No.” Determined to not let anything err him from criticizing the new bloods’ form, he set his dark eyes back on the training yard. She still paraded herself openly in Solitude, something he didn’t like, and now she was standing beside him in the shade in the yard. “You there! There’s a shield in your hand, man, you’re supposed to block with it!” Aldis shook his head, murmuring an empty insult under his breath. These new recruits would have to do a lot better than what he was seeing if they wanted to put up a fight in the war. Or against a stationary dummy.  
She was quiet, and he was satisfied with that until new words tumbled from his mouth. “Why would your teeth be sharper?”   
“Have I not told you?” Her eyes found his in a slight, mocking confusion. Like she knew something he didn’t. Which, honestly, would hardly surprise him. He’d been confined to Solitude walls for weeks now, hadn’t even gotten the chance to fish, and from what Fane had told him she’d been to Dawnstar to cure nightmares, cleared out two bandit hideouts for a bounty in Whiterun, and slaughtered a troll in the past week. He envied her ability to travel so freely, her only duty to be to occasionally report to Ulfric and go out on missions, and even less occasionally talk to a group of old men on a mountain.   
“Told me what?”   
“I joined the Companions.” As if that was supposed to mean anything to him? The farthest from the training yard he’d been was the tavern.   
“I see,” he said. To his surprise, she laughed and patted his arm.   
“No you don’t.” Tharya took a step back and circled around him, appearing against on his right and walking towards the arch that led to the street, away from the training yard.   
“Where are you off to?”   
“Some tomb. Galmar and I are going to find the Jagged Crown.”

 _By the Divines._ She made his job harder than it ever had to be. But why would joining the Companions make her teeth...?


	5. Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5: Bones
> 
> (AKA does anyone else get to the point where they start giving stuff away for free when the merchant runs out of money)  
> Another short one, I'm super busy today so I kinda rushed through this chapter :(

“Pay up, Belethor. You know these dragon bones are expensive.” The Dragonborn tapped her fist lightly on the merchant’s counter.  
“You see, I do know they’re expensive. And no doubt, trouble for you to come by, but-”   
“Eh.”

The Breton raised an eyebrow.  
“Eh?”   
“Eh as in, they aren’t too troublesome. But they’re expensive, and you told me you had a buyer.”   
“A _collector."_

Tharya paused to think, and then shrugged. She placed one elbow on the wooden counter and shifted her weight to that side, fist still curled loosely in front of the merchant.  
“Is there a difference?”   
“A buyer buys. A collector...”   
“Collects.”   
“Exactly! And so...well, let’s just say he wasn’t exactly thrilled about paying me to procure these. He’s convinced they’re fake, I think.”   
The Dragonborn was no idiot.   
“So you’re telling me you don’t have enough money for them?”   
“Precisely.” Belethor sighed, then realized what he said, and shook his hands quickly. “No--no! I do, it’s just...not here. If you were to wait until the end of the week, I could-   
“Take them.”

“What?”  
“Take the damned things anyway.” Tharya swung the knapsack onto the counter, listening to the rattle of the bones inside. She undid the clasps of the sack and placed each bone on the counter in front of Belethor. “Pay me as much as you can, and take the rest. Consider it a gift.” She snorted lightly, “Talos knows I need the room.”


	6. Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: Heart
> 
> Another short one as I try and fail to catch up

She could’ve sworn the heart thumped every now and then, but it was dead, cold, clammy even. How could it do that? It _wasn’t_ doing that, she told herself.

She had no idea what kind of potion required a daedra heart, but she didn’t like it. Better to get this retrieval mission over with and get it out of her hands...literally. The Dragonborn had been through a lot of trouble to procure it, and the only thing it had paid her back with was slimy excess on her hands. She had wrapped it carefully in a cloth, not only to hide it but so she wouldn’t have to look at the damn thing. She hurried from the market in Whiterun up the stairs, past the Gildergreen, and towards Dragonsreach. Farengar better have a good use for this damn heart, because it smelled _atrocious_. The faster she walked, the less people got the chance to smell it. Why Belethor even had one of these was unclear, but the Breton merchant seemed more than eager to get it off his hands.

The guards opened the right hand door for her, and she slipped into the Jarl’s palace, grimacing as the heart jiggled with every step she took.   
“Farengar,” she groaned as she entered the court wizard’s room to the right of the throne, “you better have a good use for this.”   
“You’ve brought the heart I asked for?” The man asked, his voice laced with childish excitement.   
“Yes, and I’m about to wretch if you don’t take it.” Tharya had been standing still long enough that the scent was filling her surroundings. The wizard recoiled once he got too close.

“Gods, that stench!”  
“You asked and you received, my friend.” With less grace than intended, she dumped the cloth-wrapped daedra heart on his table, looking around for something to wipe her hands on. “Gods,” she mumbled, quickly exiting Farengar’s room, “I need a drink.”


	7. Drunk

“But she’s admitted to being a Stormcloak, Captain!” The man with his blade to the Dragonborn’s neck pleaded. Anything to behead a Stormcloak traitor. Anything to pretend he was still the warrior he used to be. “Put your sword down, Gwain.”

“Captain-!”

“I won’t have you executing an innocent woman in the tavern. Now put down your blade before it comes off with your hand attached.” A drunk laugh emanated from the floor, and the Dragonborn—though she probably wasn’t known as such to the patrons at the Winking Skeever—clutched her stomach. Reluctantly, the older man lowered his sword. Aldis doubted he had it in him to decapitate a drunken woman in the inn, but the ex-mercenary was known to go to quite some lengths to convince people he was still for hire. Gwain’s frown reached the creases of his forehead. “I know this woman. She is no Stormcloak,” Aldis said easily. The words were a little too comfortable off his tongue, but he ignored it.

“Does a night in the Dour satisfy you, Gwain?” Defeated, the man nodded. The captain pulled the Dragonborn off the floor, slinging her arm around his shoulders. Together, they stumbled to the door. The frozen air of Evening Star assaulted both their senses, making the tips of his ears tingle. “You make my job harder than it ever has to be,” he growled, towing Tharya towards the Castle Dour.

“Oh, but without me, your life would be so terribly dull.” She hiccupped and laughed again. “No. It would be normal.”

“You were never one for normality,” she shook her head, patting his shoulder. “Never ever.” “My point is, you cannot go around proclaiming your allegiances,” he hissed lowly, “especially in a place like this.”

“Place like this?” She made a flourishing gesture to the dark houses passing them by. “A place crawling with Imperial soldiers and sympathizers. Divines, General Tullius lives here.” “My my, Captain. For an Imperial you speak a lot like a Stormcloak scout.” Aldis swallowed whatever words had been on his lips, and they staggered back to the Dour in silence.

Part of him felt bad locking her up as he had said he would, but he knew he had to. She seemed to understand, even with her features clouded by alcohol. He glanced at her once last time as he shut the barred door to the cell, frowning when she stared back at him with one eyebrow cocked. “Why do you fight for them, Aldis? Why do you fight at all?” The door shut softly, and he held the key between two fingers. “You were never one for fighting.” He broke her gaze and twisted the key in the lock.

“Because I was told to.”


	8. Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 8: Play

“Life used to be so easy, Aldis,” she sighed, handing over the last of the spiced wine to him. The sun was setting slowly through the great arch, reflecting off the gentle waves below Solitude. “Somewhere used to be home, someone used to be family.” The captain grunted his response as the bottle reached his lips. “All we had to worry about was chores and kid things.”  
“And the farm,” he gestured vaguely with one hand.  
“And the farm.” Her pale eyes settled on the burning orange water. “Now we have Tullius and Stormcloak at each other, dragons coming back to Skyrim, Morrowind covered in ash, and Talos knows what else that I can’t think of.”  
“The Thalmor.”  
“ _Ugh._ The Thalmor. And _I’m_ the Dragonborn! Sometimes I wish.”

 

Her pause left the end of the sentence hanging in the air between them, before it crashed onto the grass with the breeze rolling off the waves. _Sometimes I wish._ Aldis supposed he wished, too; for the war to be over, for the dragons to go back underground. For the Thalmor to go home. His gaze fell to the woman sitting an arm’s length away from him, her clear eyes, red warpaint that occupied her features.

“Mm. The Dragonborn.” He echoed quietly, swishing the last drops of wine in their glass container.

“ _Dovahkiin_ , in the dragon-tongue.” She nodded. “Apparently words _can_ kill.” Aldis laughed for the first time in a while. The world had demanded his words be expressionless, his life be mute for so long, it felt good. His chest seemed lighter. Tharya’s fingers closed around a smooth rock embedded in the grass beside her, and she extended it towards him. “Up for a game?”

With a grin the captain stood, taking the rock and sending it across the water with a calculated throw.  
“Four,” she nodded, her gaze counting each time the rock skipped. “Good enough, I suppose. For a first throw.”  
“Good _enough?_ ” Aldis snorted. “Go on, then. See if you can do better.”  
“I know I can.” She plucked another one from the ground, tossed it in her hand, and let it skid across the water. “Six!”

“We’re just getting started, _Dragonborn,_ ” Aldis laughed before he could stop the words in his brain.  
“Oh, by all means, _Captain._ ” She bowed dramatically and extended her arms towards the water. Aldis remembered playing this as a child; he never remembered who won. He glanced towards the setting sun. He had a night patrol, but time was abundant.

He could play.


	9. Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10: Moon  
> I like the idea of Tharya being very attached to Talos, and maaaay be brewing up a new backstory for her :)))

“Divines, I swear, I’m _done_ with Daedric princes.” The Dragonborn groaned, leaning on her staff to rest. Whiterun was on the horizon, silhouetted against the full moon. “This Hermaeus Mora one is especially gross.” She looked up to the statue of Talos, standing vigilantly still. “All tentacles and eyes... _ugh_ ,” Tharya shuddered and hobbled to the statue. Offerings surrounded the warrior-god’s feet, some fresh and others dead and frozen. Taking a deep breath, the Dragonborn mustered enough magicka in her veins to aim a fireball at one of the braziers. It roared to life. “I _did_ want to eat, but then I met this Mora guy, and now I’m truly not so sure.” She hooked her staff into the belt of her Blades armor and clambered up onto the stone dais that the statue of Talos had been erected on, and climbed with minor difficulty to the serpent’s head. “That was yesterday. In the ass-end of nowhere ice fields up to the north. I assume you’ve heard of them.” Her next move was to grab onto the thin ledge of Talos’ boot and then climb up the greatsword blade. “Walked all the way here, to Whiterun, just to take it over for the Stormcloaks.” With a grunt, she found a cold grip between the statue’s thick fingers, and hoisted herself up onto his knuckles. “Not as bad as Hermaeus Mora, but still pricks.” Her staff knocked against the stone carved bracer as she moved cautiously towards the crook of Talos’ arm, settling back against his bicep. “Can’t wait to knock Ulfric off his throne someday soon.” She propped one knee up and let the other leg fall into the open space between Talos’ arm and his torso, cradling her staff across her lap.

The Dragonborn sighed, and her stomach rumbled.

The first moon, Masser, made its slow way past the mountainous overhang, peering on the secluded shrine before Secunda joined it. Briefly she wondered if the Divines ever did things mortals did: stargazed, watched the sun rise over the mountains. If they truly cared about the mortal world, its happenings. She had reason to believe they didn’t, but her belief remained strong.

She wondered if Talos had ever watched the moon, watched it crawl across the sky, dragging Secunda behind it.

“Good night, old boy,” Fane patted the statue’s cold metal skin and closed her eyes.


	10. Villain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10: Villain  
> AKA i'm not sure if I want Tharya to really be shipped with anyone--we've already established she and Aldis are close friends, and i'm thinking she earns a few close friends through the Dawnguard and Companions, but honestly I think I might toy with the idea of Miraak?

 “May she be rewarded for her service as I am!”

It was hard to tell whether or not the First Dragonborn was being smart with the Daedric Prince, but either way her response was the same.

“What? I don’t want in on this!”

“And, hmm, why is that, Dragonborn?” He wriggled the tentacle that was pierced through Miraak’s torso. The man cried out. “Have you not already, hm, _allied_ yourself with my peers?”

“The only Daedric Prince I give a rat’s ass about is Sanguine. Meridia, too.” She weakly motioned to the blade in its dark sheath on her back. Mora didn’t seem to follow.  “I would never want to stay here. First of all, it smells terrible, and everything looks like it might kill you.” With a groan, Tharya pushed herself off the ground of Apocrypha. Meridia’s sword may yet come in handy here, with its brutal light and distaste of gross things.

“You are a talented spellcaster, Dragonborn,” Mora drawled, disregarding Miraak’s body growing limper and limper with every passing minute. “Will you refuse the offer I make? To study the most ancient of spells, to take life and death as you please?”

Her eyes shot to Miraak’s mask, ever lazily content. Beneath that, surely, was a man, his face wrenched in pain, the last breaths being drawn from his life. He had taken the same offer, had he not? And now he was paying for it.

“Not if you end up impaling me on one of your tentacles.” With caution, she drew closer to the wretched abyss of eyeballs and tendrils. “Like you did to the man who served you for thousands of years.”

“Your talk is wasted on him, Dragonborn,” Miraak growled, his voice still booming in Apocrypha despite his imminent demise. Hermaeus Mora had betrayed him, plain and simple. He did not sound regretful or surprised.  
“You _don’t_ have to be the villain here.” She stumbled forward, slowly, step by step. “You know spells, Shouts? Pass your knowledge to me. You don’t want Solstheim, it’s nothing but an ash heap.”

“Enough!” Hermaeus Mora barked, “Your _charade_ will end in nothing but your conjoined demise, Dragonborn.” It was unclear which of them he was talking to, but she advanced regardless. A slick tendril moved up Miraak’s body and slid around his head, pushing his mask off with false gentility.

Miraak was a Nord, just like her, with dark hair and a light beard. His features were distressed and angry. The right side of his face was more... _scale_ than skin, like a disease.  
“Accept my gift, _Last Dragonborn_ , and abandon your kinsman, or die with him.”

For the first time, Miraak looked at her. He looked confused and agitated and disappointed and shocked and so many other things, but most of all vulnerable. Intensely vulnerable.

“Talos preserve us both, then.”

With the last strength in her body, she leapt forward and drew Meridia’s Dawnbreaker. The wretched abyss that Hermaeus Mora manifested himself as drew back with a reeling screech. She sliced at the tentacle holding Miraak, and at the others who tried to retake him. The First Dragonborn barely landed on his feet, almost diving straight into the slimy pool of shimmering green water below him. Now she had only to find their escape route from Apocrypha--simple, right?

_And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha._


End file.
